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History of I'm A Speedrunner
The Competition I'm A Speedrunner... Get Me To The End Of There! was a video gaming speedrun tournament held between December 2009 and November 2015. I'm A Speedrunner (or IAS for short) was an open-entry tournament based on an ever-changing series of video games in which YouTubers raced each other in an attempt to be crowned champions. Unlike most kinds of speedruns, IAS tournaments were more known for Multi-Single Speedruns. IAS tournaments began with group stages with each Group consisting of 4 (5 in the first IAS and IAS? Nein!) competitors each with the top competitors in each group qualifying to the knockout rounds. Round 2 was usually, depending on how many signed up, followed by Quarter-Finals. If there were enough competitors, Round 4 would be another knockout round (usually Semi-Finals) and the Grand Final took place after that. A Triple Threat Match or Wildcard Match sometimes occured between the losers, with the winner of that match going to the Grand Final. History I'm A Speedrunner... Get Me To The End Of There! was first conceived back in 2009 in a discussion between Mr100PercentGamer and Ratchet5 while Ratchet had been doing brief leagues on SpyroSpeedruns. The name comes from the TV show I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!, and it became an inside joke within the Spyro community. Mr100P jokingly said that they should host a tournament called I'm A Speedrunner and Ratchet liked the idea and went with it. IASGMTTEOT took place between December 2009 and January 2010 and had 20 competitors facing off against each other in Spyro games. The tournament had different rules than its successors. There were five people in each group and the rounds following it had three people each. LukeRF44 eventually won the tournament. Six months later, I'm A Speedrunner 2 took place between July and August 2010 where 28 competitors faced off in Crash Bandicoot games. Current rules in future tournaments came into existence here, four people in each group. Round 2 introduced a short-lived rule where the top competitor of his group faced the 2nd person of another group. The tournament did go through some drama, but was ultimately successful. The winner of the tournament was CrashBandiSpyro12. I'm A Speedrunner 3 took place between December 2010 and January 2011 and saw a greater influx of new players than before. 48 competitors faced off in a second Spyro tournament. This was the tournament where a lot of well-known members of the community made their débuts. The winner of the tournament was Crash41596. Breaking the usual formula, I'm A Speedrunner 4 had competitors face off against each other in Ratchet & Clank games. Although there were fewer that entered and a few hiccups occurred, the tournament went by smoothly, with series co-founder and ever-present competitor Mr100PercentGamer emerging as the winner. I'm A Speedrunner 5 was the second and last Crash Bandicoot tournament, taking place between July and August 2011. The tournament introduced seeding, something that was put into use in later tournaments. Confusion emerged in the first few days as veteran Mr100PercentGamer remained largely inactive, before ultimately resigning. In the end, Samura1man would go about to win the tournament. I'm A Speedrunner 6 was the third and last Spyro tournament, taking place between December 2011 and January 2012. The winner of the tournament was RabidWombatJR. After people had gotten tired of Crash Bandicoot and Spyro games, voting was enforced which eventually lead to I'm A Speedrunner 7 centering around Disney games. Groups were not in the order of A, B and C and there were a few extra rounds in between. The winner of the tournament was CrystalFissure. In April 2013, CrashBandiSpyro12 appeared out of the blue, despite a self-expressed departure from the community, to ask people what they wanted I'm A Speedrunner 8 to be about, giving people a chance to vote. The tournament, beginning on 6 June 2013, would eventually center around Gex games. Again, CrystalFissure emerged victorious, being the only person to win two tournaments, and in succession, too. In November 2013, preparations for I'm A Speedrunner 9 were underway. Hostilities emerged shortly after IAS 8 concluded between certain members of the community, but eventually it was agreed that the tournament would be centered around Pac-Man games. Due to a falling out between Ratchet5 and CrystalFissure and Nintendogen64, conflict arose as to who was truly going to be hosting the ninth installment of the IAS series. Ratchet5 eventually conceded that Nintendogen64 and CrystalFissure (Congooze) could host I'm A Speedrunner 9 and that he would host the similarly named IAS? Nein! (Illegitimate Acquisition of Speedrunning? No!) in reference to the fact that Congooze believed that they were the rightful owners of IAS9. As it stood, two tournaments were to be held at the same time, overlapping one another. It would be Ratchet5's IAS? Nein! and Congooze's I'm A Speedrunner 9. Eventually, Congooze decided that there was no sense in holding two similarly named tournaments at the same time and there was no point in fighting IAS? Nein! as it had the full support of the speedrunning community. Therefore, I'm A Speedrunner 9 was deferred and was set to become the 10th IAS tournament and IAS? Nein! was promoted to official IAS status and will forever be considered the 9th installment in the IAS series. IAS? Nein! began on the 15th of November and was centered around the theme of speedrunning games published in the year 1998. This would include IAS favourites such as Spyro 1 and Crash Bandicoot 3 as well as previously played games such as Gex 2 and A Bug's Life. As either a homage to IASGMTTEOT or just as a coincidence, Round 1 of IAS? Nein! contained groups of 5 as opposed to the groups of 4 seen in almost every previous installment of the franchise. Additionally instead of 2 people from each group going through to the second round it would now be 3. Furthermore those who were eliminated from Round 1 were allowed re-entry to the tournament through the use of a Shaggin' Wagon speedrun. This would permit 3 competitors who did not originally qualify for Round 2 to compete in it. As IAS? Nein! went on it became apparent that the rules were quite confusing and that seemingly eliminated competitors could re-enter the tournament through Shaggin' Wagons that would occur every round. This being coupled with the fact that a lot of people took quite some time to do their matches thus making IAS? Nein! the longest tournament in IAS history at 132 days left people feeling quite mixed as to whether this tournament was any good or not. Ultimately MrFinlandboy emerged as the IAS Champion by defeating Manaidr, Nintendogen64, and SuperGhettoSandwich in a 1998 medley of A Bug's Life, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Crash Bandicoot 3. Shortly after IAS? Nein! ended - which was May 2014 - preparations for the new IAS 9 began. Originally this tournament was to be hosted by Nintendogen64 and was to be presented as a Single Elimination Tournament, meaning that instead of groups in Round 1, each competitor would face off against another competitor with the winner proceeding through the brackets and on to Round 2. Ratchet5 disagreed with this idea for numerous reasons, but mostly that it took the fun out of the group stage which had always been a highlight of the IAS tournaments. An executive decision was made that both Ratchet5 and Nintendogen64 would host I'm A Speedrunner 9 and that it would be a standard tournament based around the theme of Argonaut games. The tournament saw only 24 people join, the least since IAS4. Round 1 went smoothly enough but when Round 2 rolled around it took over a month to complete even despite the fact that only 6 matches needed to be done. Several times, in fact, Nintendogen64 threatened to cancel the tournament and upload an alternative Grand Final which would feature himself, CrystalFissure and MrFraserFilms2009, with MrFraserFilms2009 winning the match. However, matches were eventually done and TheStickKid became the 10th IAS Champion. During the final stages of IAS9, Nintendogen64, who had become irritated with everyone's lack of motivation thus leading to TheStickKid becoming IAS Champion, decided to start up the IAS Championship Scramble: an IAS competition, but not a tournament, that was to take place between IAS 9 and IAS 10. The general idea ws that anyone can race anyone with the winner of the match receiving 5 points and the loser receiving 2 points. The rules were more detailed but the abbreviated version was that the person with the most points by the end of each month gets to race the IAS Champion for the championship. This competition initally proved to be a greater success than IAS 9 and ended with TheStickKid retaining his IAS Championship over CrystalFissure in a 40 Winks speedrun. But as the next round, Survival, came along, inactivity became an issue, and the IAS Championship Scramble was abandoned. Some 6 months after the IAS Championship Scramble, an unlikely group of TheStickKid, Supster131, DessertMonkeyJK, and DigitalMasterpieces joined forces to host I'm A Speedrunner 10, billed as: "The Last IAS Tournament" and was a Naughty Dog and Insomniac Games-themed tournament. By mid-2015, the speedrunning community was an entirely different place and almost completely unrecognisable from what it had been a few years prior. Despite having 32 competitors signed-up, IAS 10 was largely met with apathy. TheStickKid and DigitalMasterpieces both quit as hosts, and the tournament took a considerable time to complete its first round with many speedruns not being completed. Controversy struck, however, in the knockout stages where tournament host Supster131 cheated by having Heydavid17 record his speedruns for him. Supster even had Heydavid play for him in the Grand Final and was therefore disqualified from the tournament. Ratchet5 subsequently exiled the one-time host from the community and he is yet to reappear. Manaidr won the tournament and became the 11th IAS Champion. In an effort to close the IAS franchise on a high-note, Nintendogen64 revived his single-elimination tournament idea for the IAS Invitational Tournament. With a mere 10 competitors, the Muppet Monster Adventure tournament was the final canonical IAS tournament. It featured Nintendogen64 finally capturing the IAS Championship by defeating MuddyMaestro in the Grand Final. After 5 years and 12 tournaments, the IAS franchise was finally retired with little fanfare. The community had shrunk even further as many competitors had grown up and moved on with their lives. Ratchet5 eventually did try to create another speedrunning tournament, R.I.P. (Running in the Past), to be a spiritual successor to the IAS franchise; However, it was clear that the demand simply was not there and thus the tournament capitulated into obscurity. With many highs and lows, memorable moments and controversies, drama and camaraderie, the speedrunning tournaments that had bound a community of individuals together were finally put to rest. Or were they...? In April 2017, over a year after the last upload on the original R.I.P. channel, Ratchet5 announced that he was reviving (pun intended) R.I.P. as a Crash Bandicoot tournament, the first in 6 years, under the name RIP: Resurrected. In the end, TrobHD emulated Samura1man's IAS 5 victory by winning the tournament at his very first attempt. Several months passed yet again without mention of a follow-up tournament to R.I.P.: Resurrected. Towards the tail end of 2017, however, Ratchet5 has been quietly discussing the idea of hosting another Spyro tournament. While some interest was there, the tournament was never realised. In April 2018, however, Activision announced the Spyro Reignited Trilogy - a collection of HD remakes of the original Spyro series from the Playstation 1. Using this announcement for momentum, the IAS 8 hosts, Nintendogen64 and CrystalFissure announced the next mainline tournament: the International Spyro Grand Prix (ISGP); which commenced on April 15, 2018. This tournament was set to be far more ambitious than any previous tournament as it saw its 30 competitors grouped into 3 groups of 10 (i.e. 45 matches per group). The tournament would also have considerable fewer rounds with a Round 2, Round 2 Losers Bracket, Semi-Final and Grand Final. The tournament channel quickly became the most subscribed to tournament channel and has the record for being the second most viewed tournament (behind IAS3). Yeswally1 became the eventual tournament winner and World Speedrunning Champion by defeating ChrisLBC, TOTOzigemm and Caitelady in a Spyro Trilogy Bingo match. Mainline Tournaments End dates are determined by the time of the Grand final taking place before being edited and uploaded. Other Competitions One-offs Spin-off series Championship Scramble Games Spyro the Dragon Crash Bandicoot Ratchet & Clank Gex Category:Active Article Category:Community Category:Statistics